This month I have been writing a blog every day as part of my WMB4X aggreement with Sudo One, except yesterday I chose not to. And why? Well for one I was verybusy and very tired. But the piece I was writing wasn’t ready and I didn’t want to rush it out just to get a blog post out.

I think I may have rushed one or two of them in the past and looking back, im not entirly happy with them. Since the blog I was going to post yesterday was a short story, I didn’t want to put it up half cut for the sake of putting something out there.

Having said all of that, I wouldn’t have produced even half of the good blogs I have, if I hadn’t had the deadline of doing a blog a day. I’ll let you be the judge of which blogs were good.

My advise to you would be to do what ever suits you best. But always keep in mind what ever you put out there on the internet, wether it be on a blog or social media, is there for all to see, and if you say anything rude, contriversal or hurtful, you better mean what you say and have a rational reason for saying it. Because while you might be able to delete it, anybody could have taken it and re used it, given you no control over it. This is advise that a celebrity or two could take note of.

Think before you post.

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Sorry Sudo One, It’s only 29 out of 30 posts, but I think with good reason.

Like this:

Adverts, to most of us are an annoyance. They exist in all manner of mediums that we put up with because they pay for the other thing associated with them that we want to look at like Television, internet sites or mobile phone games.

Adverts also exist in all manner of mediums that we are just exposed to on a daily basis with out choice such as, email and posters or billboards in airports, hospitals, petrol stations, lifts, ATMs. The list goes on.

Some say that adverts are necessary to stimulate economic growth. This may be true, but water is needed to sustain life, but we too much water will kill you. And we are drowning in the amount of advertising that exists in the world.

So why do a lot of us choose to become walking billboards ourselves? People are willing to pay for wear clothes with adverts for products on the front in huge letters. Some will go as far as to tattoo themselves with adverts and logos.

These people are paying for them, and the company is not paying them?

Sorry, but are we happy to be servants to the masters? Or are we not thinking about what we are doing here?

Are we slowly heading toward a Dystopian future, where we are all products of sponsorship (famous people already are). We won’t have our identities anymore, and our surnames will only be things like Apple, Tesco and Coke. And this is how it all starts, with free will.

The companies don’t need to try anymore, we have accepted our fate. Because that’s it, that’s the answer why. They’ve already done it. They’ve created brand loyalty amongst us. Even if you don’t wear it on your person, you own it, eat it or drink it. Then show it off in other ways than wearing it. You talk about it, write about it.

The adverts make it seem so cool though don’t they. ‘All the cool kids consume it, this is the product you should use’, we say. The marketing campaign worked. You are the advertiser.

Like this:

If you like write, or read and judge, then this is a competition for you.

You’ve probably heard of the Costa Book awards? Overall winner last year was Hilary Mantel. JK Rowling won the best Children’s book section back when it was sponsored by Whitbread. That’s right you remember now, pretty prestigious stuff.

Well last year (2012) they launched a new category for the best short story and very successful it was too. The winner walked away with £3,500. The best thing about this competition compared to others of high value prize and notoriety is that anyone can enter. You don’t need to be previously published; you just need to write a story up to 4,000 words to stand a chance.

On top of that the stories are judged anonymously, so you could be placed higher that established authors, which is exactly what happened last year.

And for the readers out there, here’s the best bit. From a shortlist of 6 stories that is selected from all the entries by a panel of judges, you get to read all 6 short stories and judge which one you think is best. The one with the most votes from the reading public wins.

I read them all last year and voted on my favourite (‘Don’t try this at home’), Shame it didn’t win. But they were all terrific efforts and enjoyable reads.

The great news is the 2013 shortlist is due to come out any day now. I highly recommend going to the website and having a read. The 2012 entries are currently still there to have a look at if you want to see what last years ones were like to.

More information on this and entering for next years are on the website too.

Like this:

As there is now under a month till Christmas, and that this 30 blog a day effort is collectively called ‘The Write-mare before Christmas’, it seems appropriate to do this top ten list. Yes in my continuing quest to find my favourite film, doing top tens by categories and sub categories continues with my favourite Christmas films….well films set at Christmas at least. Would they be yours too?

10. Elf (2003)

What stands out for me – Will Ferrell’s performance is terrific and laugh out loud at times. The premise of an Elf leaving Santa and seeing the real world had been done before in Santa Clause the Movie, but Elf adds new fun to hold its own, make you laugh and give you that christmassy feeling.

I enjoyed seeing this actor in it – Peter Dinkalidge

Great quote – Gimbel’s Manager: Why are you smiling like that?

Buddy: I just like to smile, smiling’s my favourite

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9. A Christmas Story (1983)

What stands out for me – This film is more associated with and watched in America. Although for me it still shows the magic of being a kid a Christmas and some realities that come with it. Well worth checking out in other countries too. Oh and this was the film that spawned the iconic image of a false leg lamp shade too.

Let me start by saying that the BBC is a wonderful institute in the way it’s paid for and therefore the lack of advertising is terrific. Without advertising we don’t get all that talk saying ‘stay tuned, because after break this is going to happen and you don’t want to miss that’. But is this actually the case? I think in a different way they do. In fact the BBC finds ingenious ways of putting spoilers in to a show.

Lately the BBC has been running ‘The Truth about’ programmes which herald big revelations about certain subjects. The Truth about; food, population, climate change, the house price bubble and most recently, (just on tonight) the truth about working for Amazon.

Now don’t get me wrong, these shows have been very good and very informative. Well to a point. You see the biggest headline on the BBC news website for the day these shows were on, essentially told you everything that happened in the show before it happened and then dressed it up as a breaking news headline/article. It’s not until you get to the end of the article, you realise it’s an advertisement for a TV show on that evening, and they’ve told you everything you were going to watch. Why could they have not just done the headline the day after?

After yesterday’s scathing review of the Dr Who Live Afterparty, I wanted to write one more thing about the 50th anniversary of Dr Who that had a more positive feel. Now I could write about the fabulous episode itself ‘The Day of the Doctor’, but I think everyone is in agreement that that was fantastic. I would recommend Den of Geek for a succint review of that.

I wanted to talk about ‘The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot’. This was something that was mentioned on the Afterparty, but should have probably been shown straight after it, or indeed instead of it.Read more of this post

Well, all the build-up was worth it, ‘The Day of the Doctor’, a fabulous episode to celebrate 50 years of Dr Who was had. But they couldn’t let it lie. The BBC thought, let’s do an after show party, and lets film it live. That may have sounded good at the time I’m sure, but it wasn’t.

Live TV rarely works out these days and to make it work best takes a lot of preparation and rehearsal. This appeared to have little or none of that. Hosted by an over caffeinated breathless Zoe ball and the most insincere man who’d I’d never heard of. Zoe interviewed some of the past cast and crew of Dr who, putting her head down to read the questions of her lap and not giving these people who were kind of the point of the show to fully answer. The questions asked to guests and fans were all so generic: Did you like the episode? What’s was your best memory of filming it? What was your favourite enemy that you fought (asked to a chap who only appeared in a handful of episodes). Then the answers were just as bad: Yes I loved the episode, I thought it was fantastic. Although one chap said it was like a dirty movie for him. That was funny.